Richard Broom Photography

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The Sound Recorders

Here are two remarkable people who record sounds out there in the real world. I always feel that my dull images and videos could be spiced up with sound and that I should be recording more sound. These two people are my inspiration! Also interesting to see how much you can earn when you run a YouTube Channel.

You can find these remarkable folks and buy their recordings here: https://www.freetousesounds.com Their Youtube Channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/c/FreeToUseSounds

The Castle

Findlater Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Built in the 1400s, abandoned in the 1600s. One owner, Sir John Gordon, fell out with Mary Queen of Scots and she had his head chopped off (I bet that hurt). Later, Queen Elizabeth 1 of England did to Mary Queen of Scots what Mary did to Sir John Gordon. It surely didn’t pay to upset people way back then! Off with their heads! Ouch!

The Castle – Richard Broom Photography

The Oops Moment…

My wife asked me to order two new broom handles online and, being the obliging, highly obedient, house-trained and dutiful husband I am, I did as I was told (is there any other alternative?). The image shows what arrived in the post this morning. I think, perhaps, I got my measurements wrong. If anyone can think of a use for two very short bits of stick, please let me know.

The Oops Moment – Richard Broom Photography

The QRM from John’s radio…

Okay. I lied about the last blog post of the year (previous post).

But, if Boris ‘pilllock‘ Johnson can lie to the world repeatedly, then so can I!!!

If you look at John’s blog post (please click here), you’ll see he’s getting QRM on 540 Khz. QRM is radio-speak for interference or, maybe, jamming.

John is in Las Vegas and I’m in Scotland and so, I tuned to 540 Khz on my radio to see what I would receive here on the fashionable side of the North Atlantic. And what I get on 540 Khz is a station broadcasting in a language I do not recognise. Please take a listen to the video below. If anyone knows the cause of John’s interference (I wonder about his ceiling fan!), or the language recorded in my video below, please do let us know.

Happy New Year again. This might really be my past blog post of 2020. Let’s hope for a wonderful 2021.

STOP PRESS. I just found this.

The Actor – Iona Reid – NEW PODCAST!

Please listen in to our most recent Banff Spy podcast featuring Iona Reid who is a young, up and coming actress based in Turriff in North East Scotland.

You can listen to Iona talking about acting and acting training by clicking on this link.

Please check out our Banff Spy website by clicking here.

And he’s a photograph of Iona who is also the Banff Spy Podcast Producer:

Iona Reid
Iona overlooking Banff and the River Deveron - Aberdeenshire
Iona overlooking Banff and the River Deveron – Aberdeenshire

The Morse Code

You might think that Morse code had died out long ago. Here’s a recording of what is known as a ‘pile up.’ About 11 seconds into the recording, you’ll hear Radio Amateur enthusiasts around the world trying to make contact with one person who has a rare callsign. Radio Amateurs record the contacts (AKA QSOs) with other Radio Amateurs around the world and collect contacts like other people collect rare stamps. The Morse code is alive and well!

<iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/911665330&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe><div style="font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc;line-break: anywhere;word-break: normal;overflow: hidden;white-space: nowrap;text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif;font-weight: 100;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/rrr700" title="The Photo Nomad" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;">The Photo Nomad</a> · <a href="https://soundcloud.com/rrr700/morse-code" title="Morse Code" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;">Morse Code</a></div>

The Gird Your Loins Image

I’m not sure why the phrase ‘Gird Your Loins’ sprang to mind when I created the image below (lockdown lunacy). Perhaps the rope had something to do with it. The image overall looks, I think, like some kind of strange space alien warrior. I can’t help thinking, also, that this is a female space alien. The image was created using a Photoshop plugin from Flaming Pear.

And, I searched on ‘gird your loins’ and found the second image in this post which brought me to a some wonderful art and illustrations by Ted Slampyak Kinyak his site is really worth looking at. You’ll find some wonderful illustrations on Ted’s site (click here to visit).

And so now, you can go out and gird up your loins……

Image by Ted Slampyak Kinyak – https://storytellersworkshop.com

The Map for John!

I’ve been talking to John in Nevada about the need for exercise. We are lucky, we live in a sparsely populated area and so we can take our dog for long morning walks without meeting many (or any) people. The problem is, the 5 Km walk doesn’t offset the intake of chocolate hobnobs (an essential food item surely?). Here’s our route map.

PS: map tipped over sideways so it will fit on the page better.


And here’s the beach

The Promise

I promised to send John in Nevada an image of the boats in MacDuff Harbour at low water. We’ll, we’re just past low water and the tide is well and truly out and below you can see PD182 sitting on the harbour bottom waiting for the tide to come in. The bottom of the harbour is a mixture of mud, sand and silt and so the boats cannot come to any harm. They just sit there in sludge for a few hours every day. When the tide is out and the boats are sitting on the harbour bottom, you can see that these fishing vessels have a deep draft. They’re built for the very worst conditions you will find out in the North Sea and the North Atlantic.

The Wooden Wonder

Only the Brits could make a jet aircraft using wood (see image below). In these days of carbon fibre, I feel wood is much underrated as a building material. Bring back wood (and a few more trees). Don’t you just love the touch, smell and feel of wood?

The jet aircraft, by the way, is a de Havilland Vampire. The one in the image was being restored at the RAF Museum in Cosford, a few years ago.

The Quick Brown Dog?

Those of us (and we are a vanishing breed) who can send and receive Morse code will be able to pick out ‘The Quick Brown Dog’ sent in Morse code from this interesting video. I think it should be ‘The Quick Brown Fox’ but who cares. There was a time when I earned my living sending and receiving Morse code messages. Hard to believe these days but it does prove that I am a VERY OLD MAN!!!

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